constructing effective w assignmentsof exploring further the rigid meanings and myths they might...

� 133 �

C H A P T E R 4

CONSTRUCTING EFFECTIVE

WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

This chapter offers some strategies, along with examples, forconstructing not only individual assignment prompts but also

sequences of writing assignments. As you contemplate the as-signments included in this chapter, notice how they encouragestudents to approach writing tasks with some flexibility—to linkthe writing to their individual interests.

The last three essays of this chapter include a variety of writ-ing-to-learn strategies and assignments, many of which can beused in writing-intensive courses in other disciplines as well as incomposition courses. In general, these activities can serve to fo-cus students’ attention on understanding and personalizing coursecontent. For each, consider how you might revise the assignmentto encourage students to explore not only academic interests butalso professional, personal, or civic ones.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM133

C O N S T R U C T I N G E F F E C T I V E W R I T I N G A S S I G N M E N T S

� 134 �

Sequencing Writing Projects inAny Composition Class

FROM THE PENN STATE UNIVERSITY COMPOSITION

PROGRAM HANDBOOK

The following excerpt from the Penn State University Compo-sition Program Handbook provides an overview of how writ-ing assignments can be structured and sequenced to encourageengagement with all aspects of the writing process.

For each writing project in your course, whether you are teachingENGL 015, ENGL 030, or ENGL 202, try to follow the generalsequence of activities sketched out below. This procedure teachesstudents ways to plan throughout the process of a given writingproject, makes students more aware of various activities that con-stitute the writing process, and provides them with excellent oppor-tunities to consult with others about their work in progress.

The Overall Writing Assignment

Explain in class the nature of the project (sometimes using anexample and, almost always, some full-class activity that gets allstudents involved in doing the particular sort of project you areassigning). Be sure the assignment involves subject, aim, genre,and audience. Then lead students through an invention activityto get each person thinking about his or her own project (usuallyinvolving a particular heuristic and speculative writing, followedby informal consultation with others). It usually makes sense toput assignments in writing but to avoid the overspecification thatcan lead students to write a fill-in-the-blanks response.

Topic Proposals

Topic proposals are informal plans that can serve writers in twoways: as tools for sorting out their ideas and planning, and asways of consulting with others to get suggestions.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM134

� 135 �

Proposals can be informal, as they often are in ENGL 015(“In an essay, I want to persuade readers of King’s ‘Letter fromBirmingham Jail’ that King establishes ethos in several differentways”), or more formal, as they often are in ENGL 202 courses(“The Athletic Department would like to know whether men’sbasketball fans prefer games to start at 7:30 or 8:00. Thus, theyassigned me to study the question and to write a recommenda-tion report with an answer. The report will enable them to decidewhen to schedule games this winter”). In either case, proposalsprobably should contain the following:

◆ what you want to say (a hypothesis) or what issues you will tryto resolve,

◆ for whom,

◆ for what purpose, and

◆ in what form or genre.

When students are in doubt about what to do for a given writingproject, encourage them to sketch out a couple of proposals andtalk over possibilities with others. Also encourage them to revisetheir plans as they work through a project.

If you have time, at least once before the proposals are handedin try to give students a chance to consult with each other (ingroups of three or four). After they consult, allow them time(even just a few minutes in class) to revise their proposals beforehanding them in for your suggestions and approval. For the sakeof encouraging good writing habits and discouraging academicdishonesty, it is probably best not to accept a paper unless thestudent has gained your permission to do it by means of a writ-ten proposal.

Rough Draft Workshop(s)

To encourage good writing habits, show students you care deeplyabout rough drafts. Suggestions for conducting writing work-shops are described in a later section.

PSU HANDBOOK: Sequencing Writing Projects

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM135


� 136 �

Final Self-Assessment and Reading

On the day the final writing is due, have writers do another self-assessment, using questions similar to those used for the roughdraft assessment while adding a comment on the whole process(e.g., noting major changes from the draft to the final paper, com-menting on the reasons for these changes, identifying a majorproblem encountered when writing the paper and how it wassolved, commenting on a particular strategy they tried to use).Have students hand in their proposals, drafts, self-assessments,and reader responses. Again, do not grade papers handed in with-out a proposal and a rough draft.

Evaluation of Student Work

Read your students’ papers carefully and return them in a timelyway, annotated with praise and suggestions for improvement inappropriate areas. Suggestions for commenting are described ina later section. Grading standard policy sheets are included atthe end of the handbook.

Further Reading

Elbow, Peter. Writing without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.

Nelson, Jennie. “This Was an Easy Assignment: Examining How Stu-dents Interpret Academic Writing Tasks.” Research in the Teachingof English 24 (1990): 362–96.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM136

� 137 �

Autobiography: The RhetoricalEfficacy of Self-Reflection/

ArticulationBONNIE LENORE KYBURZ

Utah Valley State College

Bonnie Kyburz offers an argument for constructing autobio-graphical assignments in composition courses. Sometimes teach-ers consider students’ autobiographical writing as lessintellectually rigorous than other forms of discourse, but Kyburzcounters that view with convincing theoretical perspectives.

In envisioning the impact of autobiographical writing on my lifeand work, I’ve seen Donald Murray’s textual reminder: “All writ-ing is autobiography” (66). I have always imagined that Murrayis correct, and if he is—and I think that he is—then we mustconsider the potential power of exploring with students the na-ture of autobiography.

I believe that autobiography may be especially crucial to stu-dents’ development as writers. Yet autobiography is often ma-ligned as self-indulgent, as naively willing to privilege outmodednotions of subjectivity, as unproductively “expressive” in the rig-idly codified Berlinian taxonomy (Berlin, “Rhetoric,” Rhetorics).Perhaps the most daunting for autobiographical practices in com-position has been the postmodern critique of subjectivity. Yet,despite postmodernist assaults on the notion of the subject andnotions of individual agency, Murray’s contention continues tomake sense in light of our understanding that all writing emergesfrom writers unable to escape who they are at the historical mo-ment of articulation, unable to disengage themselves from an in-finite variety of ideological influences that determine them asunique, however socially constructed and capable of change. Thus,all writing “speaks” of and from a complex and multivocal“source” or “self,” however problematic.

KYBURZ: Autobiography

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM137


� 138 �

For autobiography critic James Olney,

tracing an autobiographical text back from manifestation tosource, one sees it recede into a fine and finer point, and there,where it disappears into its own center, is the spiritual mind ofman, a great shape-maker impelled forever to find order in him-self and to give it to the universe. (17)

Olney underscores the notion of the writer as capable of creatingorder from chaos. Murray seems to agree with Olney, and hisagreement resonates in his endorsement of autobiography forwriting courses in which students learn to “make meaning throughlanguage” (67).

For Murray, making meaning through language clarifies, tohimself and to his audience, the ways in which his “voice is theproduct of Scottish genes and a Yankee environment, of Baptistsermons and the newspaper city room, of all the language I haveheard and spoken” (67; emphasis added). This understanding ofthe ways in which subjectivity is shaped, and “individuality” isattenuated, by the language(s) we are born into and the cultureswe inhabit, is derived from critical engagement with processes ofarticulating “the self,” through language, at a particular histori-cal moment, in a particular cultural situation. Such knowledgemay be critical for students as they work through their studentroles to gain rhetorical skills and some sense of the power ofthose skills; such knowledge may be capable of encouraging stu-dents to see themselves as capable agents rather than as submis-sive clones or members of an oppressed class of individuals in thecommunity of the intellectual elite.

Autobiographical writing processes may also embody possi-bilities for critical consciousness that may be important for stu-dents’ intellectual, public, and personal well-being. As bell hookssuggests, autobiographical writing may be important for the syn-thesis of theory and practice, particularly in terms of theorizingthat is capable of catalyzing Freirean processes of conscientization(processes through which we gain critical consciousness): “Whenour lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to pro-cesses of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists be-tween theory and practice” (61).

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM138

� 139 �

My theorizing on autobiography is shaped in various waysby Murray, hooks, and other important voices, among them MikeRose, Peter Elbow, John Trimbur, and Kurt Spellmeyer; it wouldtake a lifetime to explain the infinite ways in which such voiceshave bolstered my imagination as I have worked in the class-room. Synthesizing these voices is not wholly possible in thesepages. But let me suggest what such a synthesis allows me totheorize: it allows me to consider autobiographical practices ascapable of catalyzing for students—in ways unseen and objec-tively unverifiable—a belief in the power of language, to see howthey’ve been shaped by culture and ideologies once consideredessentially ineffectual in light of “autonomy” and “Americanindividualism.” In this way, autobiography renders the “autono-mous self” highly problematic, underscoring postmodern critiqueson subjectivity in the process of exploring personal experiencesin writing. I consider the work of self-reflection and conscien-tization to be delicately and importantly symbiotic, and for thisreason, I find that autobiographical writing processes are intenselyuseful for students of first-year composition.

As I reflect on the ways in which autobiography has informedmy theoretical and pedagogical orientations, I recall student writ-ing that is rhetorically powerful; I recall processes that have beenchallenging, pleasurable, exciting, and capable of encouragingstudents to learn essential rhetorical concepts early in their col-lege careers. In particular, I recall autobiography as capable ofpromoting students’ awareness of the need for an engaging the-sis—explicitly or implicitly articulated—which is both supportedby reasons and evidence, and rendered problematic as a meansof exploring further the rigid meanings and myths they mightordinarily assign to writing produced in institutional contexts.

If autobiographical writing is promoted as engaging, plea-surable, and rhetorical, student writers are likely to find studiesin rhetoric less daunting than they might if we begin by teachingLatinate terms and phrases that serve not to invite students to“invent the university” or to truly “make meaning” but to alien-ate them and to render their creative and intellectual strengthsimpotent or invalid. Instead, teaching autobiography not as genrebut as rhetorical strategy, we may encourage students to thinkabout their experiences and the world(s) that shapes them. By


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM139


� 140 �

breaking the natural “boundaries” of genre thinking, and by en-couraging critical engagement not only with the self but also withthe complex ways in which the self is shaped by and responds tothe world, we disavow the notion of autobiography as exclu-sively expressionistic in Berlinian terms. We work instead withinthe social constructionist rubric that includes “self” and “world.”We desegregate two key literacy myths that Shirley K. Rose iden-tifies as “autonomy” and “participation” (4). S. Rose notes that“because autonomy and participation suggest opposite poles ofexperience . . . writers’ representations imply that the two mythscontradict one another and that an individual must make a choicebetween them,” but that the two myths are actually reconciled inmany key autobiographies, among them those of Malcolm X,Richard Rodriguez, and Maxine Hong Kingston (4). S. Rose sug-gests that autobiographical writing may reconcile myths of au-tonomy and participation, confirming what hooks sees as aprocess of conscientization that occurs as we work criticallythrough processes of self-articulation.

In addition to bridging personal and public lives throughautobiography (where Phillip Lopate is especially effective), whichrenders the “autonomous self” problematic, autobiographicalwriting may promote students’ awareness of the nature of thetheses they’ve learned about (usually in high school), those the-ses that are often unimaginative and dualistic, those that have aclear “counterpoint” and are thus unproblematic in a compre-hensive sense. Through autobiography, for instance, they maylearn that claims and assertions must be supported and that thesupport they choose is determined by the rhetorical context. Ilike to teach autobiographical strategies in the context of artisticproofs—as powerful imagistic language, metaphors and similes,thick description and detail that may be particularly useful towriters who seek to use Aristotelian appeals to ethos, pathos,and logos, whatever their aim. In this way, autobiographical strat-egies may promote student writing that is more engaging andimaginative even as it advances clearly articulated arguments thatare appropriate for the college level.

Over the years, I’ve thought carefully about the ways in whichautobiographical writing is particularly useful for first-year stu-dents, who generally have very specific notions about what

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM140

� 141 �

“college writing” is. In my experience, many first-year studentscarry with them a notion of college writing as cut-and-paste ar-guments, arguments that are unimaginatively dyadic, lifeless, andpassive. Such works can be considered the product of what Rich-ard Miller calls a “pedagogy of obedience” (41), or of what Freirederides as the “banking” model (54), in which, as bell hooksnotes, “pleasure” and “excitement” are missing lest a teachermake it his or her mission to “transgress” such staid traditions ofacademic “order” in favor of a truly liberating pedagogy (7).

In short, I’ve come to see that autobiographical writing isrhetorical, and that autobiography can be useful, pedagogically,in many important ways, including these:

1. Autobiographical writing can be used strategically todeconstruct familiar pedagogies with which students are atease, compliant with, and complacent about.

2. Autobiographical writing may be used to generate hybridpedagogies that incorporate rhetorical sophistication, criti-cal cultural and personal inquiry, and playfulness. Autobiog-raphy may be used as part of what Richard Miller calls a“pedagogy of exploration,” forcing on students the burdenof critical thinking at a time when the familiar makes transi-tions easier and recognizing that “exploration,” with itspostcolonial connotative value, also implies a kind of “con-tamination,” the kind students encounter when writing ondemand in institutionalized settings (Miller 51). Students mayexplore the politics of literacy, thus encouraging their abilityto problematize who they are and who they may become inthe context of a particular historical and cultural moment.

3. Autobiographical writing is capable of assisting studentsas they unwittingly discover ways to argue effectively, evenpassionately, in the context of their own interests, which arenot prescribed. In this way, autobiography may encouragestudents to understand the power of rhetoric in their per-sonal, academic, and civic lives as they come to understandways in which they are constructed by and connected to thesocial contexts in which they live.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM141


� 142 �

For these reasons, and many others, autobiographical writ-ing processes are capable of encouraging students to develop criti-cal consciousness through self-recovery and social participation.Such work encourages students to engage in both reflection andaction as they work through their often submissive positions asstudents, as the educationally oppressed. In this way, such workencourages students to heed Freire when he passionately sug-gests that “we cannot enter the struggle as objects in order tolater become subjects” (qtd. in hooks 46).

Works Cited

Berlin, James A. “Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class.” CollegeEnglish 50 (1988): 477–94.

———. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College EnglishStudies. Ed. Steven North. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1996.

Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder, 1970.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Free-dom. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Lopate, Phillip. The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from theClassical Era to the Present. New York: Anchor, 1994.

Miller, Richard E. “What Does It Mean to Learn? William Bennett, theEducational Testing Service, and a Praxis of the Sublime.” Journalof Composition Theory 16 (1996): 41–60.

Murray, Donald. “All Writing Is Autobiography.” College Composi-tion and Communication 42 (1991): 66–74.

Olney, James. Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography.Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.

Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: The Struggles and Achievements ofAmerica’s Underprepared. New York: Free, 1989.

Rose, Shirley K. “Metaphors and Myths of Cross-Cultural Literacy:Autobiographical Narratives by Maxine Hong-Kingston, RichardRodriguez, and Malcolm X.” Melus 14 (1987): 3–15.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:53 AM142

� 143 �

Spellmeyer, Kurt. Common Ground: Dialogue, Understanding, and theTeaching of Composition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,1993.

Trimbur, John. “Literacy and the Discourse of Crisis. The Politics ofWriting Instruction: Postsecondary. Gen. Ed. Charles I. Schuster.Ed. Richard Bullock and John Trimbur. Portsmouth, NJ: Boynton/Cook, 1991.

Deliberative WritingFROM THE GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANT HANDBOOK

AT MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY

(http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~mmcooper/gtahandbook/deliberative.html)

The following material discusses the role of deliberative writ-ing in a first-year composition curriculum and provides ex-amples of viable topics for deliberative essays.

You may find this material useful not only as you describe delib-erative writing in your syllabus, but also as you construct spe-cific writing assignments focusing on deliberative writing.

Deliberative Writing

All first-year writing courses at Michigan Tech teach deliberativewriting. Deliberative writing addresses an issue of concern to thewriter and to the writer’s community and attempts to develop auseful position on the issue, a position that serves as a good groundfor action or a better resolution of problems. In deliberative writ-ing, the writer considers thoughtfully others’ ideas and positions,trying to understand the reasons others hold these ideas and po-sitions, and considering whether they can be adopted or adaptedto form part of the writer’s position.

MTU TA HANDBOOK: Deliberative Writing

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM143


� 144 �

In developing and arguing for a useful position on an issue,deliberative writing does not rely on common sense. Commonsense, or what most people believe to be true, may or may not betrue. Deliberative writing often explores whether or not whatseems to be common sense is really true. Deliberative writingalways relies on evidence to support a position—people’s realexperiences, recorded history, observations, the results of research.

In writing deliberatively on an issue, you offer evidence andreasons for your position because other people will not auto-matically agree with you, and you want to find the most reason-able position because how the issue is resolved matters to youand to others.

Many students have learned to support their own opinionsor preferences in essays but not to consider issues about whichthere are serious differences of opinion. In defining an issue towrite about, they need to be helped to find an issue that hasserious consequences in our society and that people hold differ-ent opinions on.

Examples

NOT: The history of the Internet. (This is a topic, not even an issue.)

NOT: The Internet offers a world of possibilities. (Who would dis-agree?)

YES: The Internet is improving the workplace by allowing peopleto work at home and by stimulating the growth of small businessesin remote areas.

NOT: Alternative music is better than mainstream music. (This is asimple preference; whether you like one kind of music or anotherhas no serious consequences.)

NOT: When mainstream music producers take over popular alter-native bands, they destroy their individuality. (Better, but still morean observation; why does this matter?)

YES: The music business only promotes music that has broad ap-peal, thus restricting the variety of music available. (Restrictingchoice of music is an issue that has broad cultural consequences.)

Another way to look at a position is that it is an answer tothe question readers ask on reading a lot of information: “So

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM144

� 145 �

what?” or “How does this affect my life?” Obviously, in order toconsider the various possible positions on an issue and to de-velop a useful position of their own, students need to consult andrefer to a broad array of sources of information on the issue. Butthe information and ideas they draw from sources are used tohelp them understand the issue, develop a position on it, andoffer evidence to support their position. Deliberative writing isnot the same as writing a research paper.

The purpose of deliberative writing is to find reasonable reso-lutions to issues of concern, not just to report information.

The readings students do in the textbook for the class areone source of ideas and information, but in all first-year writingclasses students should also be asked to find sources beyond theirtextbooks. Many will turn first to the Internet, which can supplylots of good information on some issues but might not be souseful on other issues. In addition to the Internet, students shouldbe encouraged to use library sources, particularly newspaper,magazine, and journal articles, government documents, and ar-chival information. Movies, television, their friends, their par-ents and other relatives, and other faculty at Michigan Tech canalso be good sources of information, depending on the issue theyare addressing.

Rhetorical Analysis:Terms of Contention

ANDY CROCKETT

Pima Community College

Andy Crockett’s essay demonstrates the importance of explor-ing the definitions of key terms in building arguments, andprovides sample assignments that encourage engagement withthe defining process.

CROCKETT: Rhetorical Analysis: Terms of Contention

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM145


� 146 �

By rhetorically analyzing key terms in controversial issues, stu-dents learn the multiple contexts that shape and finally definethese issues. A key or pivotal term serves as a doorway to greaterunderstanding of the issue, so that when students have conducteda thorough rhetorical analysis of a key term, they can appreciatethe complexity of an issue and shape a personal stance. As aresult, students grow in metacognitive ability and gain currencyin intellectual culture.

Likewise, learning the flexible and contextual nature of wordshelps students appreciate the role of rhetoric in democracy. AsBakhtin tells us, language is both centripetal and centrifugal:unifying and diversifying, self-identical and self-different. Thus,for students, citizens, or senators to engage in meaningful de-bate, they must agree on the meaning of key terms; their lan-guage must be centripetal, shared. But the centrifugal propertyof language, the tendency of words to reflect and deflect oneanother and thus to multiply meaning, forces students to recog-nize that meanings are social, complex, and ever evolving. (Burke’sidea that communication happens in the tension between identi-fication and division, sameness and difference, speaks to the samephenomenon.) Thus, the aforementioned debate can and oftendoes turn in on itself, making the very definitions of words theultimate “stakes.”

The abortion rights conflict, for instance, returns again andagain to the meaning of life—when does it begin? Is dependentor developing life truly viable or human? (Is a fetus dependent?)Should mere mortals defer to science or to religion when makingthis determination? And what does it mean to put one’s faith inscience or religion? As the structural linguistics of Ferdinand deSaussure showed us, life means something because it is not death,though students might feel most alive when plunging off a bridgeat the end of a bungee cord. In other words, life accrues meaningfrom the related “terms” clustered around it: survival, work, play,health, quality, vital signs, faith, consciousness, and so on. Thecontroversial ethicist Peter Singer (known for jump-starting theanimal rights movement when he claimed that a healthy chim-panzee is more deserving of life than a vegetative or otherwiseprofoundly disabled human) bases much of his utilitarian ethicson notions of awareness and consciousness.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM146

� 147 �

As I write, the country and the world wrestle with recon-figurations of the terms competition and monopoly within therealms of finance and telecommunications. When banks and bro-kerage firms merge as a result of deregulation, do we get more orless competition? When Disney weds AT&T, do consumers havemore options at their disposal, or do they live more at the mercyof these conglomerates? Another instance is Bill Gates’s Microsoft-Internet Explorer package. Defenders argue that Gates has playedby the rules of the market and won; others argue that the endsdon’t justify the means when the tactics are “unethical.” At anyrate, in order to take a meaningful stand on this issue, one mustcontend with the terms free market, fairness, and justice, not tomention success and ethics.

The recent debate over how best to handle an impeachedpresident teemed with power words and often zoomed in on them,turning the dispute into a metaconflict over interpretation. Whatcombatants quickly found, of course, is that meaning is contex-tual and that interpretations are inflected by one’s values andexperiences. They may also find that they are mistaken as to aword’s denotative meaning. Impeach, for example, despite itsiambic kick, is a lower house hearing, not removal, not even atrial. Likewise, by learning a term’s history or etymology, stu-dents gain historical perspective. The American Heritage Dictio-nary tells us that nothing hobbles a president so much asimpeachment, and there is an etymological as well as proceduralreason for this. The word impeach can be traced back throughAnglo-Norman empecher to Late Latin impedicere, “to catch,entangle,” from Latin pedica, “fetter for the ankle, snare.” Thus,we find that Middle English empechen, the ancestor of our word,means such things as “to cause to get stuck fast,” “hinder orimpede,” “interfere with,” and “criticize unfavorably.” A legalsense of empechen is first recorded in 1384. This sense, whichhad previously developed in Old French, was “to accuse, bringcharges against.” A further development of the sense had specificreference to Parliament and its formal accusation of treason orother high crimes, a process that the United States borrowed fromthe British. Although we have used it rarely at the federal level,impeachment stands as the ultimate snare for those who wouldtake advantage of the public trust.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM147


� 148 �

During impeachment hearings in the House, people arguedabout what the founders of the Constitution intended as theproper threshold for impeachment. Many have argued, however,that Madison, Hamilton, and others were deliberately vague aboutthe criteria for impeachment, or at least for removal, leaving thatall-important interpretation up to officials engaged in actualdemocratic debate, thus underscoring the connection betweenmeaning and practice, words and situations. Because the dictio-nary fails to clarify meaning (and meaningful action), membersof Congress and citizens made analogies between Clinton’s situ-ation and others in which impeachment was considered. Hamiltonhimself was threatened with impeachment for paying hush moneyto the husband of the woman with whom he had an affair.Hamilton, however, confessed publicly, and he was not “perse-cuted” by an independent prosecutor or partisan politicians. Fed-eral judges have been impeached for perjury, but should judgesand their work be viewed in a different context? Is a perjurer aliar in any case, and does a Senate trial set a dangerous precedentfor the office of president? The linguistic possibilities are endless.

Lesson

Students read two essays representing opposing viewpoints onan issue. First, they write a summary of each essay, defining itscentral argument or thesis and its major supporting points. Sec-ond, working in small groups they compare summaries. This canbe enlightening, for what is obvious or salient to one studentmay not be to another. It is also valuable to have students char-acterize the persona of the essay and the tone of voice, support-ing their claims with concrete textual evidence. Again, what maysound ironic to one student may ring utterly sincere to another.Students can begin to reconcile the differences in what they “hear”by considering the baggage (conditioning, beliefs, experiences,values) they bring to their reading experience.

Next, students select a key term to study contextually. (Thiscan be done individually, in pairs, or in small groups. The benefitof additional people working with the same term is that the po-tential facets they can unveil increase exponentially, leading them

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM148

� 149 �

to related terms.) Their task is multifold: One, using a collegedictionary, they write down the denotative definitions of a term.Two, consulting a thesaurus, they investigate the term’s connota-tive meanings. Three, using the definitions they have found andthe essays themselves, they identify related terms (including ant-onyms). The main term and its related terms form a word cluster.(For instance, law would be clustered with code, rule, conven-tion, custom, agreement, folkway, principle, etc., as well as crime,perhaps anarchy, and so forth. It could also be subclassified intoconstitutional law, case law, statutory law.) Four, students con-sult the Oxford English Dictionary to gain a historical perspec-tive of their chosen term (they should photocopy that page of theOED and bring it to class). Five, in light of their exploration,students return to the articles they are reading and write a newprécis.

Student Writing

1. Working alone or with others, students create a taxonomyfrom their cluster of related terms. The taxonomy must ad-dress denotative, connotative, and contextual (i.e., the presentand how the past informs the present) meanings. This tax-onomy can be portrayed as a tree with branches and histori-cal “roots,” or it can be a map with illustrations, road signs,streets, arrows, perhaps geographical barriers, and of courseinhabitants. It will probably be organized by categories suchas legal, moral, ethical, and constitutional, if not tribal andpolitical. Students present the taxonomy to the class and reportwhat they’ve learned and how their opinions have changed.

2. Students write a rhetorical analysis of the role their keyterm—and its family of related terms—plays in the issue.Thus, they will analyze how the various players in the issueuse the term, including the conditions or threshold for agree-ment and the sparks for disagreement. The purpose of therhetorical analysis is to teach their classmates, their teacher,and themselves not simply the meaning of the term but alsothe meaning of the issue.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM149


� 150 �

3. Finally, students write a formal argument employing whatthey have learned. They may take a stand on the general is-sue or argue for an interpretation of their key term. At anyrate, the key terms will focus the students’ essays.

Works Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist.Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P,1981. (Original work published as Voprosy literatury i estetiki,Moscow, 1975.)

Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1945.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. Ed. Charles Ballyand Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophi-cal Library, 1959.

Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Avon, 1977.

Assignment PromptEDWARD A. KEARNS

University of Northern Colorado

Edward Kearns describes a novel assignment that requires stu-dents to critically examine issues raised by newspapers pub-lished on their birthdays.

Assignment

Students examine newspapers published on the day of their birth(or their parents’ or grandparents’ births)—or newsmagazines

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM150

� 151 �

printed during that week—then write a three- to five-page essay.The source provides ample material; the task is to make sense ofit: to establish a unifying theme or perspective. Simply reportingon various stories, editorials, ads, and so forth won’t do; rawdata of any kind is meaningless without a point of view or under-lying structure that establishes relationships and meaning.

Of course, students will want teachers to supply examples ofunifying themes, and certainly we can do that, but insisting thatthe students simply examine the raw material to “see what itsuggests” leads to brainstorming/inventing and to the discoverythat doing research without prior frames of reference is in itselfinventive and stimulating. Creativity in any art often amountssimply to juxtaposing forms or materials in uncommon ways—hence, for example, metaphors such as “pearl of blood” or “blueroses.” Simultaneously, the analysis and synthesis required offersan exercise in inductive reasoning.

If students have trouble, however, teachers can suggest com-paring today’s prices or clothing styles to “back then,” or ask,“What does advertising tell us about people’s tastes, behavior, orinterests twenty years ago?”; “What do movies and televisionshows (or bestsellers, or pop music) tell us about ______ (fill in‘values,’ ‘taste,’ ‘censorship,’ etc.)”; “Where did _______ (a pieceof legislation, an event, a trend) lead?”

The assignment provides a bridge from personal narrativesto formal exposition, to research, and to writing with sources—while retaining the motivational value of personal writing. Suchresearch might be used, for example, to contextualize personalmemories. It requires students to work with categorical (ratherthan chronological) organizational structures and leads to longer,more complicated expository tasks such as writing papers aboutentire decades, developments in various fields, shifting values,pop culture trends, and so on. It can even lead back to narrativeand fiction since story writers commonly conduct such researchto create atmosphere and verisimilitude for their stories.

KEARNS: Assignment Prompt

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM151


� 152 �

Profile AssignmentSARAH T. DUERDEN, JEANNE GARLAND, AND

CHRISTINE EVERHART HELFERS

Arizona State University

Duerden, Garland, and Helfers outline a series of assignmentsthat expand the scope of profile projects by asking students tomake connections between their professional or academic in-terests and their writing.

Rationale for the Assignment

Because the profile genre requires students to integrate their ob-servations and field research into a paper, it is a useful and enjoy-able assignment that can lead naturally into assignments requiringintegration of research. The profile can also be used to help stu-dents begin to think about their careers and the professions theywould like to enter. Although this may seem premature for first-year students, with the increasing pressure to complete a degreein four years, students benefit from investigating career choicesearly on.

This profile assignment, developed by the three of us, asksengineering students to discover what engineers really do in theirprofessions. We developed this assignment in response to thenumber of engineering students who realize at some point in theirdegree programs that engineering involves much more than goodmath and science skills. Nevertheless, many students are advisedto enter engineering because they excelled in these subjects inhigh school. They have less understanding of the additional oraland written communication skills, teamwork skills, and creativeskills they will need to develop. Therefore, our profile assign-ment asks students to interview a professional engineer, attend apresentation by another professional engineer, and integrate thatmaterial into a profile that shows high school students what theengineering profession involves.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM152

� 153 �

The assignment is presented to students as a problem theycan solve through a piece of writing. We find this approach use-ful with engineering students since members of their professionoften regard themselves as problem solvers; however, we havealso used this terminology with nonengineers to encourage stu-dents to see that we usually write for a purpose rather than justbecause a teacher has asked us to do so. Their task is outlined inthe solution. They must write a profile of an engineer they haveinterviewed, but they must also incorporate material from a pre-sentation and material from a book on engineering. In this way,students learn to synthesize multiple sources, a task which al-lows us to discuss the question of validity of sources. The assign-ment sheet also identifies the purpose and audience for the pieceof writing. In all of our early assignments, we give students aspecific purpose and audience; as the semester progresses, weremove this scaffold and ask students to create their own audi-ences and purposes. Thus, our early assignments also act as modelsfor students as they learn to create their own rhetorical situa-tions for their writing. Finally, the assignment identifies the con-straints within which the students must write. Again, we deliberate-ly employ this term because it is one they work with in engineer-ing. As the semester progresses, we also remove this scaffold sothat by the end of the semester, students develop their own con-straint lists—constraints the rhetorical situations have created.

Having students complete this assignment is beneficial inmany ways. By writing the profile, students discover for them-selves—from the mouths of “real engineers”—what working asa professional involves. They identify the skills they will need todevelop during their university careers. If they focus solely ondeveloping outstanding math and science skills and neglect team-work, communication, and creative skills, they will find them-selves ill prepared for the workplace. Students also learn toincorporate quotations in a natural way because they are quot-ing their interviewee and other sources to support the interviewee’sclaims about the profession. We have found that this approachhelps students make the transition from assignments that focuson themselves to assignments that focus on issues outside theirpersonal experience.

DUERDEN/GARLAND/HELFERS: Profile Assignment

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM153


� 154 �

We later revised this assignment for use with non-engineer-ing students. This time, we asked them to interview someone in aprofession they had themselves worked in or one they hoped towork in. We also asked them to find supporting material on theWeb or by using Career Services. A second option was based onan essay that argues that part-time jobs teach students few usefulskills. Since most students have worked in part-time jobs in highschool or currently work while they are in college, we felt theywould have easy access to someone they could interview.

This version of the assignment proved successful. Some stu-dents interviewed relatives who worked in professions they wantedto enter, and so the assignment allowed them to discover moreabout their potential future careers. Others interviewed friendswho held part-time positions, and several found that althoughthey thought they would prove that part-time jobs are a positivebenefit to students, their observations and subsequent profilesshowed otherwise. They saw the problems their peers experi-enced juggling work schedules, schoolwork, family duties, andsocial lives.

Invention Activities

With both engineering and non-engineering students, we do anumber of activities to help them think about whom they mightinterview. Once the students have decided on subjects, they canwork on a list of questions they want to ask. Again, we oftenpractice this in class by using ourselves (teachers) as professionalinterviewees and asking students to design questions for us. Thenwe give them invention sheets to fill in for the presentation andfor the interview. (Both are appended at the end of this assign-ment.) Students may use the invention sheets to arrange the ma-terials and use the tables to further organize those materials.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM154

� 155 �

The Assignment for Engineers

PROBLEM #2: WRITING A PROFILEFirst Draft Due: Friday, October 2Second Draft Due: Monday, October 5Polished Draft due: Friday, October 9

SituationYou are one of several student representatives for the first-

year engineering program. You have just met with the dean ofengineering and the president of the university. At the meeting,the dean and the president discussed the low retention rate inengineering. After the first year, almost 30 percent of the stu-dents change majors. The dean and the president asked you toreview a questionnaire distributed to students who left engineer-ing at the end of last year. One response stands out. Many ofthese students said they changed majors because engineering isnot what they thought it would be. In fact, many felt they hadbeen poorly advised in high school, where advisors had oftenrecommended engineering as a career because the student wasgood at math and science. However, upon entering the univer-sity, many have found that engineering requires a number of skills,including communication skills and teamwork skills. At the nextmeeting, you explain this to the president and the dean, and theyask you to help them come up with a solution that will helpfuture engineering students.

SolutionYou and the other representatives decide to write profiles of

a particular type of engineer that will be distributed to high schoolstudents considering a career in engineering. These individualprofiles of a mechanical engineer, a civil engineer, an electricalengineer, and so on will be assembled and given to high schoolstudents so that they can gain a more realistic view of engineer-ing before they begin their university careers. Therefore, yourassignment is to profile a particular engineer.

Base your writing on an interview with a professional engi-neer you know, or a senior engineering student about to gradu-ate, or an engineering professor. (Of course you can interview


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM155


� 156 �

relatives.) In addition, draw on the material that Joe Circello pre-sented and on Chapter 2 of James L. Adams’s Flying Buttresses,Entropy, and O-Rings: The World of an Engineer (Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1991) in which Adams defines engineering. Adamsbegins with dictionary definitions, though these do not prove tobe very useful. He then discusses misconceptions people haveabout engineering, the variety of professionals who classify them-selves as engineers, the kind of work they do, the range of knowl-edge engineers must possess, and various definitions anddescriptions applied to engineering.

Your PurposeYour purpose in this paper is to inform potential engineering

students about the kinds of work typically done by a specificprofessional engineer, his or her allocation of time for varioustasks and activities, and so on.

Your AudienceYour readers are high school students who know little about

what professional engineers do but who are considering engi-neering as a career because they are good at math and science.

CONSTRAINTS:

◆ You must interview and use quotes from a professionalengineer, a senior engineering student, or an engineeringprofessor in this profile.

◆ You should also use material from Joe Circello’s presenta-tion and material from Adams as further support for yourprofile.

◆ When you quote or paraphrase your interviewee or JoeCircello, you must make it clear that this is their idea. Thus,you should use signal phrases in your sentences such as“According to Joe Circello” or “Joe Circello explains.”Make sure that you explain their expertise the first timeyou mention these people in your profile. Also note thatyou should use the present tense: “Circello explains,” not“Circello explained.”

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:54 AM156

� 157 �

◆ When you are relying on Adams, make sure you identifythe ideas that belong to him by using signal phrases suchas “According to Adams” or “James Adams explains that.”Again, initially explain Adams’s expertise to your readers.You must follow quotations or paraphrases with in-textparenthetical citations (the page number[s] in parenthe-ses) as we discussed in class. Also, see the St. Martin’s Guideto Writing, pages 595–605. Again, remember to use thepresent tense: “Adams says,” not “Adams said.”

◆ You must include a copy of your interview questions withyour paper.

◆ You must write for your audience. Since they are highschool students, you may have to define unfamiliar termsand give examples and comparisons.

◆ You will need a thesis in your introduction. In your text-book, this is called a “dominant impression.” All para-graphs in your essay must support that thesis. There shouldbe an obvious order to your paragraphs, and each para-graph should develop only one idea.

◆ You can choose to organize your profile topically or chro-nologically (a day in the life of). See page 140–142 of yourtextbook for details.

Format

◆ Length: 4 to 5 typed pages or 1000–1250 words, double-spaced with one-inch margins. Include your name, ournames, and the class time in the top right-hand corner ofthe first page. Number pages, please. Page 1 is alwayscounted but it is not numbered on your work, so you mustsuppress that number on the first page. Give your work atitle that is not in caps and is centered on your first page,and begin typing your essay one double space below yourtitle.

◆ Include a separate alphabetized works cited page.

◆ See page 628 of your textbook for a sample works cited


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM157


� 158 �

page. See page 605 for how to cite the book by Adams.See page 612 for how to cite a personal interview. Use thefollowing format to cite Joe Circello’s presentation:

Circello, Joe. Presentation. Foundation Coalition Program. Ari-zona State University, Tempe. 23 Sept., 1998.

Assignment Revised for Students Other Than Engineers

(Much of the instructional information in this adaptation of theassignment echoes the first; in such cases, repetitive text has beenomitted.)

WRITING A PROFILEDue Dates (same)

With your polished draft, you must submit the following materials:

1. All invention work

2. All drafts

3. All peer review work

4. Interview notes

5. Article from print or Web sources

6. Reflection on writing to be written in class on Wednes-day, October 7 (see page 152 of St. Martin’s Guide toWriting for the prompt)

FormatLength: 4–5 TYPED PAGES OR 1000–1250 WORDSSpacing: double-spaced with one-inch marginsNumber pages: Put your name and page number on each page.Title: Give your work a title that is not in caps and is centered on

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM158

� 159 �

your first page, and begin typing your essay one double spacebelow your title.

Option OneChoose a profession that you believe people have mistaken

notions about. It may be one that you would like to enter, or onethat you have already worked in, or one that a relative works in.You will find sources about professions by going to Career De-velopment in Career Services (3rd floor of the Student ServicesBuilding). You may also use the Web. I have found the followingWeb site especially helpful: http://www.jobprofiles.com/.

You can also search the library indexes of magazines for pro-files of careers.

SituationAs a member of the Professional Organization of (add the

profession here), you have just attended a conference in whichyou and your colleagues discussed the low numbers of new gradu-ates entering your profession. One member of the conferencepresented a survey showing that a number of high school stu-dents interviewed about your profession either had mistakennotions about the profession or knew little about it. (Rememberhow David Noonan tries to correct mistaken notions about sur-geons and their attitudes in his profile.)

SolutionWrite a profile of this professional that could be distributed

to high school students considering a career in this profession.This would allow these students to gain a more realistic view ofthe profession before they begin their university careers. Baseyour writing on an interview with a professional you know inthat field, or a senior student about to graduate and work in thatprofession who has done an internship. (Of course you can inter-view relatives.) In addition, you will need to find an article thatdescribes that profession. You should include this material withyour paper when you hand it in for grading.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM159


� 160 �

Your PurposeYour purpose in this paper is to inform potential students

about various aspects of this professional’s workload, includinghow he or she typically works and on what time frame, the na-ture and variety of tasks completed, the skills he or she needs,and so on.

Your AudienceYour readers are high school students who know little about

what professionals in this field do but who are considering thisas a career.

CONSTRAINTS:

◆ You must interview a professional for this profile and quoteextensively from that source in your paper.

◆ You should also use material from another source such asa print article or material from the World Wide Web. Youmust include copies of these sources with your paper.

◆ When you quote or paraphrase your interviewee, you mustmake it clear that this is their idea. [Omitted here are therules for paraphrasing cited in the earlier assignment sheet.]

◆ You must include a copy of your interview notes with yourpaper.

◆ When you are relying on other sources, make sure youidentify the ideas that belong to that author by using sig-nal phrases such as “According to Adams” or “JamesAdams explains that.” [Omitted here are the rules for us-ing quotes cited in the earlier assignment sheet.]

◆ You must write for your audience. Since they are highschool students, you may have to define unfamiliar termsand give examples and comparisons.

◆ You will need a thesis in your introduction. [Again, stu-dents are instructed to consult the St. Martin’s Guide.]

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM160

� 161 �

◆ You can choose to organize your profile topically or chro-nologically (a day in the life of). See pages 140–142 of St.Martin’s Guide to Writing for details.

Option TwoMany educators believe that part-time jobs do little to teach

high school students useful skills. In fact, many believe that suchjobs harm students because they take away time students need tospend on their studies. Read “Working at McDonald’s” (St.Martin’s Guide to Writing, pp. 299–300) for an example of some-one who feels that part-time jobs in high school are a waste oftime.

SituationImagine that the PTA of the local high school you attended

read this article and is now considering asking students not towork part time.

SolutionIf you agree with the premise of the article on McDonald’s,

write a profile of someone you know who does a part-time job,showing how that job is not teaching the student useful skills. Ifyou disagree with the premise of the article, write a profile ofsomeone who does a part-time job showing how that job teachesstudents useful skills.

Your PurposeTo persuade the PTA that they should support the ban on

part-time jobs or to persuade them that they should not supportthe ban.

Your AudienceYour readers are parents of high school students.

CONSTRAINTS:

◆ You must interview a student who holds a part-time joband quote that person extensively.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM161


� 162 �

◆ You should also use the article “Working at McDonalds.”

◆ When you quote or paraphrase your interviewee, you mustmake it clear that this is their idea. [Again, rules for para-phrasing are typically reiterated here.]

◆ You must include a copy of your interview notes with yourpaper.

◆ When you are relying on other sources, make sure youidentify the ideas that belong to that author by using sig-nal phrases such as “According to Adams” or “JamesAdams explains that.”

◆ You must write for your audience. You may need to ex-plain and give examples for this audience.

◆ You will need a thesis in your introduction. [Include in-structions on paragraph and essay organization from ear-lier instructions.]

◆ You can choose to organize your profile topically or chro-nologically (a day in the life of). See page 140–142 of theSt. Martin’s Guide to Writing for details.

Observation Notes for Profile

Prior to class, answer the following questions:

◆ What do I already know about engineers?

◆ What words do I associate with them?

◆ What kinds of work do I think they do?

◆ What skills do I think they have to possess?

◆ What skills are less important to them?

◆ What do I expect to discover?

◆ What would surprise me?

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM162

� 163 �

◆ What do most people think about engineers?

◆ What would most people be surprised to discover?

How do my views of engineers differ from most people’s views?Observation Notes for Profile

During or immediately after class, fill out the following:

◆ Name, Company, Position

◆ Years of work/overview of career

◆ Physical appearance

◆ Key points discussed

◆ Least surprising

◆ Most surprising

◆ Dominant impression

◆ Quotation or paraphrase

Invention Sheet for Writing a Profile

You have now gathered a lot of information. Use this inven-tion sheet to help you begin to sort out and organize that infor-mation.

◆ What is my purpose in this profile?

◆ Who are my readers and what must I do to meet theirneeds in this profile?

◆ What have I learned about a professional engineer that Ifound surprising or new?

◆ Does that differ from what most people think, and if so,how?


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM163


� 164 �

◆ Could I turn that into a thesis?

◆ How would I describe this person professionally?

◆ How would I describe this person physically?

◆ Should I organize my material topically? If I organize topi-cally, what topics should I focus on?

◆ Which source deals with each topic?

◆ If I organize chronologically (a day in the life of), when doI begin? What events or actions do I describe? Should Iinclude a description of the workplace?

◆ What source will help me support my description of a par-ticular event or action?

◆ Should I begin this profile with a striking image or vividscene, an interesting fact, an anecdote, a question, or apiece of dialogue?

◆ Should I close this profile with a new image, an anecdote,a piece of dialogue, an interesting fact, or should I use theone that I began with?

◆ How can I restate my thesis without repeating the samewords I used in the introduction?

Picture Exchange: Sharing Imagesand Ideas in First-Year Composition

DONNA REISS

Tidewater Community College

Donna Reiss’s assignment links students’ interests with theirwriting in a uniquely personal way.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM164

� 165 �

Originally developed as a way to engage first-year students in thewriting process at the beginning of the term and to build a learn-ing community by introducing busy commuter students to theirclassmates, a picture exchange has become the foundation of oursemester, establishing writing-editing partnerships, electroniccommunication exchanges, and attention to detail that I hopewill continue throughout the term. I assume that all students havea picture they care about and that the task of describing theirown picture will be less unsettling than other personal topicswould be as a first piece of writing that will be shared with strang-ers. I ask that they select an image that is already part of theirpersonal collections to ensure that they really do know and careabout both the image and the content depicted. This exchangefosters the kind of active learning recommended by Marilla D.Svinicki in which students “make connections between what theyknow and what they are learning” (31).

Because students write these descriptions as letters to class-mates with copies to me, they usually think about audience evenbefore that concept is introduced in class. The letter is a familiarform, encouraged as a genre for academic writing by Elbow,Fulwiler, Reiss, and Young, among others. Because students at-tempt to distinguish between their own and their classmates’objective descriptions of the images and their subjective interpre-tations or explanations, they are practicing skills they will fur-ther hone as they read and respond to the essays in their textbooks,subsequent peer papers on general topics, and the sources theylocate for their required research paper.

Depending on how often we can access a computer-networkedclassroom, we do some elements of the picture exchange in classand others asynchronously between classes. Now that my stu-dents also develop electronic portfolios, future students will scantheir images and incorporate revisions of their accompanying let-ters into Web pages.

Step 1: Each student selects a picture and makes two copies, onefor a classmate and one for me. They also compose a 300- to 500-word letter to their classmate in which they describe the image inobjective, concrete language and explain the importance of the im-age and their reason for selecting it.

REISS: Picture Exchange

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM165


� 166 �

Step 2: Before reading the partner’s letter, students view theclassmate’s picture and write a 150- to 200-word letter to that class-mate describing the partner’s image in objective, concrete languageand explaining what feelings the image evokes and why they thinkthe image is important to the classmate.

Step 3: The partners exchange their step 2 letters. Each studentwrites a short note thanking the classmate for his or her thoughtson the picture and identifying specific points that were interestingand ways in which their perceptions about the image were similarand different.

Step 4: The students meet, each reading the partner’s original step 1letter and the partner’s response. They compare the descriptionsand reactions. Together, they write a letter to the entire class inwhich they highlight similar and differing reactions to the picturesand discuss the reasons. This letter is published and distributed tothe class. If time permits, each pair also makes a brief oral presen-tation to the class.

Students usually bring pictures of their family or friends, some-times including themselves, sometimes not. Because we live in acommunity that annually hosts the East Coast surfing champi-onships, pictures of surfing or bodyboarding are also typicalchoices. One student, for example, brought a picture of himselfstanding on a reef overlooking a beach in Puerto Rico, where hehad mastered a particularly challenging wave, and described thesetting as a reminder of the exhilaration of that achievement aswell as a memory of the colors and feel of the water. His respon-dent was a woman who did not surf herself but as a lifelongresident of Virginia Beach was familiar enough with the equip-ment, a surfboard, and our own sandy, reefless beach to discernthat the setting was a distant beach and that the person whoselected the picture probably had a passion for beaches as well asfor the sport.

The picture-letter exchange demonstrates to students thatmany writers and scholars work and learn together rather thanin isolation, as emphasized by Ede and Lunsford in Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Their ca-sual writing exchanges help novice writers connect with theirclassmates and prepare them for later peer-response groups asthey share writing first in a nonthreatening but meaningful way.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM166

� 167 �

Works Cited

Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Per-spectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern IllinoisUP, 1990.

Elbow, Peter. “High Stakes and Low Stakes in Writing.” New Direc-tions for Teaching and Learning 69 (1997): 5–13.

Fulwiler, Toby. “Writing Back and Forth: Class Letters.” New Direc-tions for Teaching and Learning 69 (1997): 15–25.

Reiss, Donna. “Epistolary Pedagogy and Electronic Mail: Online Let-ters for Learning Literature.” Learning Literature in an Era ofChange: Innovations in Teaching. Ed. Dona J. Hickey and DonnaReiss. Sterling, VA: Stylus2000.

Svinicki, Marilla D. “Practical Implications of Cognitive Theories.”College Teaching: From Theory to Practice. Ed. Robert J. Mengesand Marilla D. Svinicki. New Directions for Teaching and Learn-ing 45. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991. 27–37.

Young, Art. “Mentoring, Modeling, Monitoring, Motivating: Responseto Students’ Ungraded Writing as Academic Conversation.” NewDirections for Teaching and Learning 69 (1997): 27–39.

Reflecting on Journal WritingLISA EDE

Oregon State University

The following assignment prompt is designed to encourage stu-dents to reflect on a range of course material. As Lisa Ede notes,the prompt also serves as “a mechanism for having studentsevaluate their own journals. It was originally developed by LexRunciman (now at Linfield College in Oregon) when he wasWIC director at OSU. I have used it in first-year writing andliterature courses, as well as advanced courses. It’s wonder-fully efficient for teachers. I can move through a journal that astudent has preevaluated very quickly. More important, though,

EDE: Reflecting on Journal Writing

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM167


� 168 �

it engages students in self-reflection and self-assessment. I’vefound over the years that students are almost always accuratein their self-assessment; if anything, I often have to raise thegrade they’ve given themselves.”

Journal

Purpose and Logistics

The journal has one primary purpose: to encourage you to inter-act more deeply (and also more enjoyably) with the texts we arereading. Your entries should be more controlled than freewrites—simply free-associating or writing whatever random thoughtscome to mind is not acceptable—but they are in no sense mini-essays. You do not need to come to conclusions in your journalentries, nor do you have to attend to the formal and logical con-straints characteristic of essays. Rather, the entries are designedto provide an opportunity for you to speculate freely, and evenplayfully, without having to feel sure of your outcome. Your en-tries can take many forms. A successful entry might explore aquestion or topic by considering a relevant example or by work-ing through an analogy. You might draw on your own experi-ence to consider the implications of an idea, or you might makea list of all the questions or issues that a particular topic, quota-tion, or question raises. Just about anything goes as long as itindicates real intellectual engagement.

Most often, I will provide prompts for journal entries. Thoughmy prompts will obviously guide and constrain your response,you nevertheless have great freedom in how you address thequestion(s) or issue(s) it raises. A prompt might cause one stu-dent to reflect on her personal experiences, while another mightaddress the prompt in a more theoretical or historical vein. As Ihave said already, but will repeat for emphasis, what I’m lookingfor is engagement with the texts we are reading.

I will read your entries and return them to you. Please keepyour entries in a folder for resubmission during and at the end ofthe term. (Be sure to print and save all online postings as well.) Ifat the start of the term you have any concerns about your journal

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM168

� 169 �

entries, I’ll be happy to review them with you.For print journal entries, please date all entries and write the

topic, question, or quotation to which it is a response at the topof the page. (If the quotation is lengthy, feel free to write a briefsummary of it.) Your entries may be handwritten or typed.

Evaluation

Journal entries will be evaluated on three criteria: commitment,ambition, and engagement. Style is a consideration only to theextent that your ability to manipulate language influences yourability to articulate complex and engaging ideas. The focus in thejournal is your ability to engage in critical thinking.

I will collect your journals around midterm time and at theend of the quarter. On both occasions, when you hand in yourjournals you will include an evaluation based on the criteria listedabove. (See the evaluation sheet, which includes descriptions ofA, B, and C journals.) As part of this evaluation, you’ll write twoor three sentences to explain your ratings and then indicate anoverall grade. I’ll review your journals and your evaluation, andI’ll use the same criteria to guide my feedback to you and toarrive at your journal grade at the end of the term.

Journal Evaluation Sheet

A Journals

Commitment: The writer turns in all journal entries (unless he orshe has an excused absence). Entries may vary in length, but theyregularly go on for enough time to reflect and accommodate ex-tended thought.

Ambition: Journal entries regularly try to consider issues or posequestions which engage the writer but for which the writer mayhave no ready answer. The writer is willing to speculate and totry to make connections between this course and his or her expe-rience. The writer is not afraid to address complex—and evenparadoxical and contradictory—ideas.

EDE: Reflecting on Journal Writing

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:55 AM169


� 170 �

Engagement: The writer is clearly using the journal entries to“push” his or her understanding of the text or question in par-ticular and of the course material in general.

B Journals

Commitment: The writer turns in all but one or two journal en-tries. The entries often reflect and accommodate extended thought,but at times they seem merely to summarize or in an unengagedway to comment on the topic.

Ambition: Journal entries often try to speculate about issues andquestions and to make connections between the course and thewriter’s experience. But a number of entries discuss conclusionsand/or summarize or respond in an unfocused way to the topic.The writer is also less comfortable with tension, dissonance, andparadox and tries to resolve or “iron out” complexity.

Engagement: The writer sometimes uses journal entries to “push”his or her understanding of the text or question in particular andof the course material in general; a number of entries, however,seem formulaic or completed merely to fulfill the assignment.

C Journals

Commitment: The writer fails to turn in three or more journalentries.

Ambition: The journal entries seem cursory, the result of coer-cion rather than interest. There is little or no effort to speculate,to reach for more than obvious conclusions, or to connect withthe writer’s own experience.

Engagement: The writer rarely if ever uses journal entries todeepen, much less “push,” his or her understanding of the textor question in particular and of the course material in general.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM170

� 171 �

Journal Evaluation Sheet

Name____________ Date____________

Evaluation of COMMITMENTGradeReasons:

Evaluation of AMBITIONGradeReasons:

Evaluation of ENGAGEMENTGradeReasons:

Overall grade

Role-Playing as a Writing-to-LearnActivity

MARY M. SALIBRICI

Syracuse University

Mary Salibrici’s role-playing assignments encourage studentsto explore how writing is shaped by authorial identity and con-text.

SALIBRICI: Role-Playing as a Writing-to-Learn Activity

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM171


� 172 �

As part of a writing course that emphasizes the rhetorical natureof language, I have designed a sequence of role-playing assign-ments that function as write-to-learn activities. Such writing taskswork effectively as learning exercises since, building from Emig,I have found that they relate to students’ “evolutionary develop-ment of thought, steadily and graphically visible and availablethroughout as a record of a journey, from jottings and notes tofull discursive formations” (129). Completing this assignmentsequence, in other words, provides students with an opportunityto invent perspectives with words and thus deepen their under-standing of the basic rhetorical premise of the course—that is,what you write is governed by who you are, why you are writ-ing, to whom, and at what cost. Additionally, they are more fullyprepared for subsequent formal essay assignments that ask forcritical analysis of various rhetorical features of a text. The write-to-learn activities prepare students to think deeply about the rhe-torical nature of writing as they invent a persona and try to writeconvincingly in the role of a particular author.

Specifically, I have used such role-playing writing assignmentsfor a six-week unit that focuses on the trial and subsequent ex-ecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and culminates in a mocktrial that applies the rhetorical principles under investigationthrough an integration of reading, writing, speaking, and listen-ing activities. For the first two weeks of the unit, students read avariety of pieces representing different interpretations of the case,including excerpts from a defense attorney’s bestselling book, anovelist’s fictional rendition, feminist perspectives about Ethel,the Rosenbergs’ son’s interpretation of events, articles from theNew York Times, and editorials from the Daily Worker, to namea few. Complete texts from which the excerpts are taken, alongwith additional readings that are described in an annotated bib-liography, are placed on library reserve for further student read-ing and research.

The first role-playing exercise is assigned after students readexcerpts from Nizer’s The Implosion Conspiracy (1973) andRadosh and Milton’s The Rosenberg File (1983). They have be-gun to form preliminary impressions of the people and eventsinvolved in the case and often have strong opinions about theRosenbergs’ guilt or innocence. After completing these readings,

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM172

� 173 �

I ask students to provide a two-page general summary of the caseas they understand it so far; however, there’s a twist to my re-quest because they must adopt a particular persona as they write.The options are as follows:

◆ Write as if you are a reporter for the New York Times puttingtogether a news summary to run on the front page shortly be-fore the Rosenberg’s scheduled execution in 1953.

◆ Write as if you are submitting a text to your twentieth-centuryAmerican history professor as part of a take-home final exam.

◆ Write as if you believe the Rosenbergs to be innocent (or guilty)but your magazine editor has asked you to prepare a neutralsummary of the case to be run in a For Your Information col-umn.

The options are hypothetical, of course, but each one asks for aparticular spin that students will have to convey, with the take-home exam persona being the most familiar. Interestingly, moststudents choose the unfamiliar stances of newspaper reporter ormagazine writer. We then share the written texts as a class, dis-cussing the nuances of word choice, style, and tone as represen-tative of specific personas. We discuss whether they have beeneffective in making their roles come alive in writing and howthey accomplished such an effect. Through specific languagechoices, they have invented the way a particular author mightapproach a particular task. These write-to-learn inventions re-sult in a deeper appreciation for the way language works and amore personalized understanding of the various interpretationsthat can be made about the Rosenbergs’ story.

The next role-playing exercise asks students to write in aneven more specific way. Having read further about the case atthis point, students have begun to develop a fuller understandingof the various people and events central to the case. There areseveral layers to the next exercise, because students are asked toshare what they are reading and writing in small groups that willultimately parallel their working groups for the mock trial. Theyare actually working on reading-to-learn and writing-to-learnactivities as this exercise proceeds.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM173


� 174 �

First, I ask students to join a small group that fits a perspec-tive of particular interest to them, perhaps the point of view ofthe defense, the prosecution, scientists and historians, or report-ers covering the case. We continue our assigned readings, butstudents are expected to read further on their own, perhaps uti-lizing materials on library reserve, so that they can familiarizethemselves with the role of a specific person represented by theirsmall group. For the writing portion of this exercise, I ask stu-dents to assume the voice of one individual involved in the caseand represented by their group and to choose a format in whichto play that person’s role in writing. They may choose, for ex-ample, to portray the Rosenbergs’ defense attorney and write anopening statement to the jury, or they may choose to portrayEthel Rosenberg through a witness affidavit. I ask that they ad-here to the historical facts as closely as possible; in other words,they should not fictionalize material if they are trying to portrayan actual historical person.

As students gather in their small groups, they share materialthey have gained from the readings and work on short presenta-tions they can make to the entire class about the specific indi-viduals they represent. I also ask students to meet me for short“reading conferences” so that before they actually write theirpieces we can cover what they have learned and any questionsthat may arise. As we proceed through this role-playing exercise,I supplement the class readings by presenting film documentariesand artistic renditions of the Rosenberg case. Throughout thisexperience, students are taking notes and jotting down ideas thatrelate to the individuals they want to represent in writing. I alsoshare an actual witness affidavit form, and we read excerpts fromthe opening statements used at the trial in 1951.

All of these writing and reading preparations help studentsdiscover and invent approaches for our class production of a mocktrial, in which we give the Rosenbergs a second chance to defendthemselves. Additionally, such writing-to-learn activities providestudents with a more sophisticated understanding of the wayrhetoric works in language, thus preparing them for the morecomplex and formal essay assignments that are required beforethe unit concludes. Just before the mock trial begins, for instance,students are asked to complete a critical essay that presents their

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM174

� 175 �

analyses of the rhetorical choices made by particular authors wehave studied. They can either compare and contrast the rhetori-cal choices made by two different authors in order to argue thatone is more effective at making a case, or they can do a moreexpository essay that simply explains the way rhetoric operatesin a particular text and for a particular author. At the close of theunit, after students have watched each other produce the manydramatic facets of a mock trial, including newspaper coverageand literary representations, I ask them to write a critical essaythat explains their current understanding of some aspect of thecase. The various write-to-learn activities, which have served tocomplicate their understanding of how language works rhetori-cally, prove useful to this final endeavor since most students nowrealize that a simple argument about guilt or innocence is theleast interesting approach.

Such write-to-learn activities can be very useful, especiallyfor composition courses with inquiry topics that revolve aroundthe rhetorical nature of language. A class that looks closely atdifferent historical and political events such as the Lindbergh kid-napping, the Vietnam War, or even Generation X, could modelthe kind of activities I have presented here. Several current an-thologies would also well serve the type of approach that asksstudents to read and reflect on the way a single event or issue canlend itself to a multitude of interpretations. Bizzell and Herzberg’sNegotiating Difference (1996) and Selzer’s Conversations (1997),for example, appear suitable for such purposes because they rep-resent topics of inquiry through a diverse range of contrastivereadings.

Works Cited

Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. Negotiating Difference: CulturalCase Studies for Composition. New York: Bedford, 1996.

Emig, Janet. “Writing as a Mode of Learning.” The Web of Meaning:Essays on Writing, Teaching, Learning, and Thinking. Ed. DixieGoswami and Maureen Butler. Upper Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook,1983. 122–31.


e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM175


� 176 �

Nizer, Louis. The Implosion Conspiracy. Garden City, NY: Doubleday,1973.

Radosh, Ronald, and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File: The Search forthe Truth. New York: Vintage, 1983.

Selzer, Jack. Conversations: Readings for Writings. 3rd ed. Boston: Allynand Bacon, 1997.

Writing-to-Learn PromptsEDITH M. BAKER

Bradley University

Edith Baker’s writing prompts, like Mary Salibrici’s role-play-ing exercises, ask students to explore issues from various writ-ers’ perspectives, and also require them to engage in criticalthinking, such as the synthesis and analysis of complex ideasraised by their reading of American authors.

These writing-to-learn strategies for a beginning American writ-ers course are based on Peter Elbow’s philosophy that studentsneed to write often and freely, without fear of evaluation or re-striction. Britton’s belief that writing allows for “shaping at thepoint of utterance” is the foundation for these writing to learnprompts. Their purpose is to foster fluency as they encouragestudents to probe critical questions about the content of Ameri-can literature. Central to the design of the one-semester course isthe philosophy that by developing students as American writersthemselves, they will wrestle with some of the same concernsthat other American writers have debated.

All voices will create a conversation on similar topics, suchas the individual’s relationship to society or the rugged individual’sconfrontation with nature. Thus, the first prompts listed below

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM176

� 177 �

are open-ended and attempt to engage the self (Polanyi) beforeengaging the students in written texts. A variety of forms, frompoems to autobiography, are also encouraged. Later, students canread what other American writers have said about similar issues,concerns, values, or beliefs. These prompts move from more open-ended protocols to more focused freewriting; the final examplesattempt to challenge students to make connections and demon-strate mastery of course content.

Open-Ended Freewriting Topics

1. Discuss your favorite novel by an American writer. Why do youlike the book? Do you remember anything about characters orthemes?

2. The SAT II examination is now being marketed as a way forstudents to “achieve the American dream.” Define the Ameri-can dream. What are some of the personal characteristics thathistorically have distinguished Americans? What is your personalinterpretation of the American dream? What do you hope hap-pens to you in your lifetime? (After students write on this topic,a good activity is to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have aDream” speech.)

3. Sometime before midterm, write freely on the most importantthings you have learned in this American writers course. Try tomention specific authors or texts.

4. Situate yourself in a place outdoors. Concentrate on your sur-roundings and begin to describe what you see around you. Givemany details of your observations. Imagine you are Thoreau atWalden Pond and are walking the fence posts and being “aninspector of snow storms.” Where do your musings take you?Allow time to immerse yourself in nature for at least forty-fiveminutes, and write down your thoughts in a stream-of-conscious-ness manner.

5. The instructor will provide selected passages from Thoreau’sWalden. Read these before going into nature and see whatthoughts emerge as you ponder your surroundings in a favoriteplace.

6. Freewrite on any topic of your choice, remembering that youare an American writer, too. You might want to try to imitatethe style of Paine or the topics of concern for Bradstreet. If youwere Ben Franklin, what would your eleven attributes of a de-

BAKER: Writing-to-Learn Prompts

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM177


� 178 �

cent human be? (Remember, he added humility after his first listof ten!)

Because I prefer discussions with students who have read thematerial, some prompts simply require condensation of readingassignments due at class time. I might ask students to summarizea short story or an introductory chapter of Puritan history, forexample. I have found that mentioning specifics, such as charac-ter development, tone, mood, conflict, plot development, sym-bolism, style, and theme, gives students more schema to triggertheir thinking.

Modeling an author’s style is another possibility for a writ-ing-to-learn prompt. When reading Thoreau, students might copyten sentences from his essays or Walden and discuss his writingstyle. This same technique of imitation is offered in the option towrite a poem or chapter from their autobiography in the mannerof Bradstreet, Cabeza de Vaca, Franklin, or Equiano. Likewise,one in-class prompt for a freewriting exercise asks students towrite the first sentence of their autobiography. I challenge themto think about how they would define themselves. I read somebeginnings from other autobiographies and ask students to iden-tify what defines their lives. Is it a value or a belief? Knowingthey will not be graded, students can freely reflect on these ques-tions.

After the more open-ended prompts and imitation of mod-els, I suggest focused freewritings. These prompts challenge stu-dents to make connections between the texts, define importantconcepts, and trace themes throughout U.S. history such as theidea of westering, the concept of the frontier, different responsesto nature, and the evolution of the Puritan work ethic. These logentries are writing-to-learn activities that help students mastermajor concepts of the course.

During the first class sessions, I present many ideas on a con-tinuum and note that during the course of the semester we willbe tracing the evolution of these ideas. I also tell students thattheir final examination will consist of taking one of these ideasand tracing the issue, value, concept, or belief through at leastsix writers and at least three centuries, developing their own the-sis about the evolution of this concept. Student writings thus serve

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM178

� 179 �

as invention activities, in the manner of Aristotle, throughout thecourse. These prompts require thinking skills of comparison/con-trast, definition, and synthesis.

Text-Based Writing Prompts That Require SpecificReferences to Readings

1. Discuss major characteristics of eighteenth-century writings:styles, topics, authors, concerns, voice, tone, etc. Develop yourown theory about this period in American literature.

2. Read the works or transcriptions of Native American cultures:oral chants, writings, creation myths, songs, and rituals. Pon-der the role of oral literature in American literature and theinfluence of Native American thought on our world today.

3. Summarize the similarities and differences in Hawthorne’s text“Rappaccini’s Daughter” and the PBS video of the same story.Note themes, style, symbolism, plot, and character develop-ment, as well as other points.

4. Write out succinctly Poe’s theory of the “unity of effect” (hand-out). Apply this concept either to Crane’s “The Open Boat” orGilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

5. Having read some short stories by modern writers, what doyou think has happened to Poe’s theory of the unity of effect?Include specific references to at least three writers.

6. Discuss at least three authors’ responses to nature. Compareand/or contrast topics, approaches, styles, concerns. Cite spe-cific passages. Develop your own theory about the evolutionof writers’ concerns about nature.

7. Compare and/or contrast images (portraits) of women or menin at least three works of literature. How do you see roles ofcharacters evolving?

8. Read one of the plays in the text by O’Neill or Tennessee Wil-liams and discuss character development and themes.

9. Rent some of the recent movies based on the works of HenryJames, such as The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of a Dove,and discuss how the issues in the movie relate to the topics weare discussing in class.

10. Consider the idea of God as different authors have written abouttheir relationship to a metaphysical or supernatural world. Men-

BAKER: Writing-to-Learn Prompts

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM179


� 180 �

tion some of these writers and discuss how individuals’ re-sponses to “something greater than themselves” have changedover time. Cite specific authors and texts.

Works Cited

Britton, James, “Shaping at the Point of Utterance. Reinventing theRhetorical Tradition. Ed. Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle. Conway,AR: L&S Books, U of Central Arkansas (for Canadian Council ofTeachers of English).

Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writ-ing Process. New York: Oxford UP, 1981.

Polanyi, Michael. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Phi-losophy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1958.

e47496C04 12/6/1, 9:56 AM180

constructing effective w assignmentsof exploring further the rigid meanings and myths they might...

Documents